[zebraitis]

Folks,

I have a question if the v 19 music library export will support what I would like to do.

My directory structure is like this:

MP3s
  |
  |---- Artist 1
  |         |
  |         |------ Album A
  |         |-------Album B
  |
  |---- Artist 2
  |         |
  |         |------ Album


(fyi:  I'm using confluence for my skin)

In the past, an export would copy the specific artist's folder.jpg and fanart.jpg to the specific artist's subdirectory.

Now it looks like the export of that info need to go into a separate dedicated folder where all artist info (folder.jpg, fanart.jpg and .nfo) go.  That is, if I chose the option to Export to Library Folders.

Is it still possible to have artist info go into the specific artist's subdirectories, and the album info into those folders under the artist name subdirectories?


Would the solution be to point the required Artist subdirectory to my folder called MP3s ?

If I do, will the creation of a folder overwrite my music?  Is the export smart enough to recognize that there is a folder there with that artist's name already?

 
Thanks.  I look forward to a reply.

[Karellen]

Would the solution be to point the required Artist subdirectory to my folder called MP3s ?

You could do that- Make the Artist Information Folder (AIF) the folder that also contains the song files. But....
Artist folder names in the AIF are very specific. They exactly match the Artist tags in the music file, whereas your \MP3\Artist Name can be anything, which means a lot of the times your folder name won't match the correct Artist name and you will get duplicated folders.
eg "Sting" -v- "Sting and the Police", "Olivia Newton-John" -v- "Olivia Newton John", "The Rolling Stones" -v- "Rolling Stones" etc

[zebraitis]

Would the solution be to point the required Artist subdirectory to my folder called MP3s ?

You could do that- Make the Artist Information Folder (AIF) the folder that also contains the song files. But....
Artist folder names in the AIF are very specific. They exactly match the Artist tags in the music file, whereas your \MP3\Artist Name can be anything, which means a lot of the times your folder name won't match the correct Artist name and you will get duplicated folders.
eg "Sting" -v- "Sting and the Police", "Olivia Newton-John" -v- "Olivia Newton John", "The Rolling Stones" -v- "Rolling Stones" etc

Yeah, I get that.

The good thing is that I only go with the album artist name as my subdirectory name.  And I don't do sub-artists (ie: folks that help out on an album, extra guest rappers, etc)  If the majority align and then some need to be moved, I think that I could handle that.

OK...  I'll give that a swing.  And then I'll have to rescan the library once done.  (and yes, I already have a backup of all the data/music on a separate drive).

------------------------------------------------------

Outcome:  Pointing the Artist Information Folder (AIF) to where my music already was ended up working well.  

The first pass was the actual export of the music library.  And I would say that most of the artist names matched to my already existing folders. 

Where they did not was either 1) a spelling error on my part, 2) an accent mark being actually added because it is part of the artists name (ex: Björk),  3) including "The" in a name where it should not have been (ex: "Pretenders", not "The Pretenders"), 4) Something else / something weird.

Checking my deleted folder, I could see that there were 65 artist changes that I needed to make out of 1,200 artist folders.  So a really good match.

Once that was resolved, I renamed the folder on my drive, and wiped out the library by removing the source.  Then I re-named, re-added the source, and rescanned.

Done and works.

[Karellen]

Done and works.

Great. I'll mark this solved.

Not sure how you ended up in OS Independent. I'll move you to the music forum

Also, not a good idea to edit your post with additional information. No-one gets pinged when you do that, and no-one notices. A new post will always show up as a new post and attract attention.

Thread marked solved.

[scott967]

re Naming, just be careful about keyboard apostrophe and quotes vs typographical ones (which eg musicbrainz tends to prefer).

scott s.
.

[curtis-r]

I have the same standard folder structure as @zebraitis, and used to occasionally export my music library as sort of a backup of all the data and thumbs, but also to make it quicker to rescan my library which I seem to find the need to do every few years.  Always great to see Kodi evolve with more options options such as with this revised Music/Export, but I'm not sure if I can do what I used to do and have the data go where the source music is, rather than create folders based on tags.

My artist names are spot-on in alignment with the tags, but albums are not.  As @Karellen illustrates, with Separate File Export, Kodi creates folders based on tags. My album folders vary dramatically, i.e. "The Police - Syncronicity" or "Syncronicity (1983)".  I'd be willing to find or try-to-write a script that fixes the album folders, but that would ruin my music playlists.

Is there any way to reproduce the legacy music Export?  If not, I'm going to try to just export artist info & skip albums.

[Klojum]

My album folders vary dramatically, i.e. "The Police - Syncronicity" or "Syncronicity (1983)".  I'd be willing to find or try-to-write a script that fixes the album folders, but that would ruin my music playlists.

Isn't that more a case of fixing your MP3 tags into making them more consistent? Years have their own mp3 tag field, for example.

[curtis-r]

I should have been more clear. The examples I gave are not of tags but folder names. My tags are good. And to fix folder names would screw up my playlists and create a big project.

[Karellen]

@curtis-r

With the music library, the recommended method for Export is the Single File method... https://kodi.wiki/view/Import-export_lib...ingle_File
It is a comprehensive export and it can be saved to any location Kodi can access.
If you use this method, you won't encounter the problem with album folders.

It is different to the video library where we recommend the Separate Files method.

[curtis-r]

With the music library, the recommended method for Export is the Single File method... https://kodi.wiki/view/Import-export_lib...ingle_File
It is a comprehensive export and it can be saved to any location Kodi can access.
If you use this method, you won't encounter the problem with album folders.

It is different to the video library where we recommend the Separate Files method.

Thanks for the info.  So there is no longer a way to export music like before (and like the video library)?

[Karellen]

Thanks for the info.  So there is no longer a way to export music like before (and like the video library)?

I don't really know what Legacy export you are after. What exactly do you want export to do that is not being done now?

There are other export option, scroll through that wiki page and you will see the available methods.

=edit=
So are you saying that your Artist Information Folder is pointed to the same location where your music files are stored?
As long as your artist folder names correctly match the tags, it does not matter how you have named the album folders. The nfo file is still saved next to the song files in the album folder.

[scott967]

I think you will find library -> export music library 

kind of export output : to library folders
items to export : albums
output info to nfo files

will result in the "old" behavior for album.nfo files (with the same limitations)

scott s.
.

[curtis-r]

@Karellen,

Yes, my Artist Information path is my Music root folder, but I just tried exporting thumbnails & artist.nfo, but all it did was create empty folders for the artists whose tag name didn't match the folder name (yes, I claimed that this was clean ).  I read the wiki before posting.  I'm going to play around with this a bit more & report back.

@scott967

Won't your settings create new album folders based on the tags that don't match my actual album folder names?

[DaveBlake]

Album titles and the names for the album folders don't matter. As long as all the music files for an album are in a unique folder, and no other music files are in that folder then Kodi will export an album.nfo file to that location.

As Scott said

kind of export output : to library folders
items to export : albums
output info to nfo files

will result in album.nfo files alongside the music files.